Russell Banks is the founding president of Cities of Refuge North America, a BMI Advisory Board member, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His novels include The Reserve, Cloudsplitter, The Darling, The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Affliction, and The Sweet Hereafter. The latter two works were adapted into feature films that received widespread critical acclaim, and The Darling is currently under development by Focus Features and Martin Scorsese. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards, including the Ingram Merrill Award and the John Dos Passos Award. Banks lives in upstate New York and is the New York State Author. He will serve as the Elias Ghanem Chair in Creative Writing at UNLV from mid-February to mid-March.